New Press Law Alienates Mubarak's Media Supporters

By James J. Napoli

Ibrahim Nafie was sweating.

The head of the Egyptian Press Syndicate was sitting on stage under television lights in an un-airconditioned conference room jammed with journalists on a stifling hot Cairo afternoon.

But that wasn't the only reason he was sweating. Nafie, who is also editor-in-chief of the semi-official Al-Ahram newspaper, was being buffeted between protests and cheers from about 2,000 journalists at the Syndicate headquarters in central Cairo.

He had proposed only that a strike be threatened if the government did not back down from a repressive new press law. Now waves of anger from his constituents were forcing him to set a specific strike date, June 24, only two weeks from that day's gathering.

Nafie, a government appointee and one of the chief spokesmen for the Mubarak regime, was in a miserably uncomfortable spot at the head of a possible walkout that could put the regime in a dangerous, perhaps fatal position. But he had no choice.

Members of the Press Syndicate, who have a deserved reputation for passivity, had finally been aroused by a sweeping new law, passed abruptly and without consultation by the People's Assembly in May, to protect the regime and Mubarak's own family from embarrassing charges of corruption in the opposition press. The allegations have been picked up and widely disseminated by foreign journalists.

The law, whose passage was engineered by People's Assembly chief Fathi Sorour, would impose fines and prison sentences from 5 to 15 years for journalists for a range of vaguely worded crimes. These include publishing false or malicious information, inflammatory propaganda and anything that disturbs the public peace. Also punishable is anything that harms the public interest—including damage to the national economy—or that holds state institutions and officials in contempt.

Previous penalties were limited to fines from LE 20 (about $6) to LE 500, and up to a year in prison. Journalists also were protected from arrest while an investigation was under way.

Under the new rules, journalists could be thrown in jail for almost anything, and they would have to provide documentary proof for anything they printed. The latter is virtually impossible in a country where most official documents are inaccessible, official statistics are of dubious value and government officials are reticent or uncooperative.

In a not-for-attribution discussion of the new law, an Egyptian ambassador justified it on grounds that the opposition press had been free to publish any reckless libel, without evidence and without fear of reprisals. The new law was only meant to intimidate the press into more responsible behavior, he said, and probably would not be enforced. President Mubarak himself asserted at the May 29 Media Day celebration that the law would not affect anyone who wrote "honorably and with trust."

The new law has united journalists against the government.

But, unluckily for the Mubarak government, the law has had precisely the opposite of the intended effect: Instead of intimidating the press, it has united journalists in both the national and opposition papers against the government and spurred the opposition press to even greater extremes. The extent of the trouble was first signaled by a sit-in by more than 1,000 journalists—about a third of the total membership—at Syndicate headquarters June 6.

Passage of the law invited comparisons with the repressive treatment accorded the press by the regimes of the late Presidents Gamal Abdel Nasser and Anwar Sadat. President Sadat was killed by religious extremists in 1981, the same year he rounded up and imprisoned hundreds of uncooperative journalists.

"Strike," said Hassan El-Rashidi, a member of the Press Syndicate board of directors and employee of the government paper Al-Gomhouria. He said that although the Syndicate preferred to get the government to back down in negotiations, minor amendments to the law would not be enough. "Cancel the law or we go on strike," he told the Washington Report before the June 10 Syndicate meeting.

He was echoed by many other journalists interviewed, who vowed that if agreement could not be reached and if the planned one-day strike didn't result in cancellation of the law, they would continue to strike until it did.

The opposition press, which already had staged a one-day strike, had in the meantime been publishing ever-more-daring articles, almost taunting the regime to try to enforce the law. One article in the opposition Al-Shaab newspaper was headlined, "Corrupt rule slaughters press freedom." Another opposition paper, Al-Ahrar, wrote an article headed, "Good-bye to democracy in Egypt."

The "Gang of Sons"

Although the government maintains that the law was prompted by the need to protect the privacy of individuals and their families from scurrilous press attacks, it came after several years of accumulating charges against public officials and their relatives. Among those who have been cited in the press for alleged corrupt business dealings were the sons of Information Minister Safwat el-Sherif, Prime Minister Atef Sidki and of President Mubarak himself. They have been dubbed the "gang of sons" and have become the butt of jokes circulating through Cairo, a sure sign of popular disgust in Egypt.

The indignation of journalists has built to the point where they are stifling voices in the Syndicate who have publicly defended the president, such as writer Sarwat Abaza and chief editor Mustafa Naguib of the government-owned Middle East News Agency. The Syndicate passed a resolution threatening to expel any member who violated Syndicate decisions. Anyone who doesn't strike, for instance, could end up without a job, since Syndicate membership is required to work in the Egyptian press.

By pushing the law through, the Mubarak regime managed to alienate one of the few professional syndicates in the country that had given him unstinting support. Other syndicates, including those for doctors, lawyers and engineers, have been dominated by Islamists and the government has resorted to legal steps to try to reassert control over them. The Press Syndicate, by contrast, remained firmly in pro-government hands.

"This is a slap in the face," said one young reporter for the semi-official daily Al-Akhbar. "All this time in the government's struggle against fundamentalist violence, we took the side of government. And this is how we are treated."

Despite government claims that it has religious extremism under control, the war with Islamists continues unabated in upper Egypt and fundamentalist fervor appears to be spreading and deepening among the young, the poor and jobless. They are not likely to be assuaged by sensational stories of privileged elites getting still richer at the country's expense.

Along with the growth of fundamentalism there has been a rising incidence of human rights abuses, including the mistreatment of ordinary Egyptians caught in the path of government crackdowns. Morale among the army and security forces is reportedly low.

Further, the economic gap between the rich and poor continues to grow, and with the increase in the level of poverty has come an increase in related problems, such as malnutrition. Several government measures, including changes in the landlord-tenant law, have also increased hardship and unrest among rural populations.

Under these and other pressures, initiatives to increase democratic participation have not only ceased, but last year the national government ended the venerable practice by which villages elected their own mayors and deputy mayors in an apparent effort to head off Islamic infiltration of rural government.

In an environment where the Mubarak regime is losing friends fast, it cannot afford to lose any more fast friends, as most of the media once were considered to be. No wonder Ibrahim Nafie was sweating.

James J. Napoli chairs the department of journalism and mass communication at the American University in Cairo.